This course is aimed to give you the tools and knowledge you need to start creating simple art for video games made in the Unity game engine. Through the aesthetic of pixel art we will explore artistic principals like shape language, color theory, and composition as well as show you a step by step workflow for creating assets that you can use to make your own games. The course is broken into 4 main modules, props, environments, characters, and animation. Each of these courses will have a series of video lessons alternating between artistic and technical skills culminating in a peer-reviewed project based assignment. The last module will challenge you to take the knowledge learned in the previous 4 and use it to create your own pixel art asset pack.
This course is aimed at art novices who are interested in creating art for their own games or contributing to game projects. If you are a game designer or programmer, you will find this course helps give you a glimpse into the world of game art. You will be able to better work with artists, or create your own prototype or final artwork. If you are an artist or visual designer who is interested in bringing your style to the world of video game development, this course will give you the workflow to properly interface with a game engine and help contextualize how your artistic sensibilities can enable gameplay.
If you have ever wanted to start making art for video games but have no idea how to start, this course is the perfect for giving you a solid foundation while teaching you usable practical skills. Our goal is to give you a sense of the whole pipeline from creation to setting up in a game engine.

Taught By

Andrew Dennis

Professor of Practice

Ricardo Guimaraes

Professor of Practice

Transcript

In this video, I will show you how to apply our knowledge of shape language to create enemies for our game. Hi there, Andrew here. While creating the enemies uses the same process as creating our main character, different things need to be taken into consideration. For the player, the most important thing to know about an enemy, is how it will harm or attack the player. While the player will learn from experience, good character design means making the purpose of each enemy obvious. The shark is meant to jump out of the water and threaten any player who gets too close. The direction of the shark can and will move is clear from the shape and direction the shark is pointed. The shark is essentially a column. If you were playing a game with this enemy in it, you would be surprised that the shark leaped suddenly to the left or right. Instead the design not only uses triangles to indicate a threatening nature, but the orientation of those triangles make it clear what the shark will do, from the very first time you see it. The bird is similarly oriented to move left and right across the screen. We know birds fly, so we expect the bird to attack that way. But the inverted triangle of the bird gives a sense of speed and imbalance indicating this is an enemy that will attack quickly, and from above. The skeleton is a trapezoid, making it feel like a barrier or obstacle to overcome. We get the sense that this character would hold his ground and then lunge at it suddenly. The silhouette of this character highlights the drone and prepared sword, showing this in one direction the skeleton is likely to attack. This wraps up week three. You can take the new techniques you've learned here, combined with the art skills you've been building so far to create more enemies, characters, environments or props for your scene. Next week we'll be finishing up this module by learning how to animate for pixel art.

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